Ma`rifat Falsafi

As one of the important branches of applied ethics, professional ethics addresses moral oughts and ought-nots in specialized domains of human life, with “the ethics of art” being considered one of its most prominent instances. The relationship between morality and art, particularly in contemporary philosophy, has been a subject of serious controversy, encompassing perspectives ranging from the complete independence of artistic value from morality to moderate moralism. Employing a descriptive-analytical approach based on library sources, this research, while elucidating prominent contemporary views such as those of George Dickie and Noël Carroll, investigates the relationship between morality and art as per the foundations of Islamic philosophy and, specifically, the thought of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi -a domain that has hitherto been rarely addressed in a coherent and systematic manner. The research findings indicate that, from the perspective of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, morality encompasses all voluntary human actions, including the artistic act; thus, art is not only dependent on morality but stands in a deep and reciprocal relationship with it. Within this framework, the moral value of art is the outcome of the interaction among three elements: the artist, the artwork (comprising form and content), and the audience, with the ultimate criterion of evaluation being the artwork’s relation to human true perfection based on religious teachings. Accordingly, the desirable art is one that, both in terms of the artist’s intention and agency, and in terms of form and content, moves toward human moral and spiritual transcendence. Finally, the article elucidates the moral principles governing the artistic act and the moral duties of the artist based on the thought of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, demonstrating that in his view, the ultimate goal of art and the ultimate goal of morality converge in human true perfection and divine proximity (taqarrub).